Monica Patel, a 2011 National Wildlife Refuge System Wilderness Fellow, does shoreline inventory and
monitoring work at Edwin B. Forsythe Refuge in New Jersey.
Credit: Bill Crouch/USFWS

One Center, Four Branches

Often, the Refuge System Inventory and Monitoring program and the Natural
Resource Program Center are thought of as one entity based in Fort Collins, CO.
But the NRPC is more than just I&M.

The NRPC also includes a human dimensions branch, which explores how people,
natural resources and wildlife management decisions interrelate, and a water
resources branch, which oversees the inventory and assessment of water quantity
and quality on Refuge System lands. The air quality branch, 70 miles south in the
Denver suburb of Lakewood, also reports to the NRPC.

The Refuge System Inventory and
Monitoring programbased at the
Natural Resource Program Center
works with regional coordinators to
bolster U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
science by establishing various
baseline data regarding fish, wildlife,
plants, water and other resources on
national wildlife refuges, on other
Service units and at landscape scales.
The regional I&M coordinators are:

Few initiatives are more vital
to the Conserving the Future
goal of bolstering the scientific
underpinning of National Wildlife
Refuge System wildlife management
than the Inventory and Monitoring
program.

The I&M program was established in
2010 to gather, analyze and disseminate
authoritative, scientifically rigorous
biological data about the status, trends
and responses to management of
species and habitats within the Refuge
System, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service and landscape conservation
cooperatives (LCCs).

The I&M program is based at the
Natural Resource Program Center
(NRPC) in Fort Collins, CO, with about
70 regional coordinators and biologists
located around the country. In its twoyear
existence, says national I&M
manager Jana Newman, the program has
made headway in many areas, including:

Ensuring that field stations have
access to a core set of geospatial
abiotic base data layers for
topography, aerial photography,
hydrology, soils and infrastructure.

But what Newman, Mark Chase, the
director of the NRPC who oversees the
I&M program, and Keenan Adams, the
newest addition to the I&M team, really
want Service employees and others to
know is: The I&M program exists to help
the field.

If youre a refuge manager putting
together a comprehensive conservation
plan … or a refuge biologist seeking
landscape-level data on an endangered
species thats outside your area of
expertise … or a visitor services
specialist looking for reliable information
but having trouble navigating a
cumbersome database, were here,
says Newman. Contact us. Be proactive.
We try to reach out, but with 556 refuges
we cant reach everybody. Contact your
regional I&M coordinator or your data
manager. We can help out.

Adams, in particular, sees himself as a
nexus between the field and the science
center for the Refuge System.

Most recently a deputy project leader
at Pelican Island Refuge Complex in
Florida, Adams came to Fort Collins in
June as a managing biologist.

I was one of those refuge managers who
took every opportunity to remind people
in the headquarters office and regional
office that they should engage the field
more with certain decisions, he says.
This job was an opportunity to practice
what I preach. I knew that I&M would
have many challenges if refuge managers
and biologists were not bought in.

He saw the job as a chance to work
in a science center and gain a nationalscale
perspective, but also provide the
center with a field perspective. He
expects most of his time to be spent on
managerial matters and working with
the NRPCs new human dimensions
branch, but hell spend a good deal of
time as an I&M biologist asking, Does
this make sense to the field.

Chase identifies three major challenges
for the I&M program, which is funded at
about $20 million annually.

The first is changing the cultural
mind-set to truly look at conservation
challenges and solutions beyond our
artificial human constructs of
political boundaries, regional and
programmatic structures.

The third is data management, which
Chase says is expensive and often
an afterthought. We must make the
organizational commitment to invest
in data management to support every
refuge, both regionally and nationally.

For now, Adams has an immediate
message to Service employees on the
ground: Get engaged. Call your regional
I&M coordinator. Stay open-minded. Use
the tools that will be provided to you by
the I&M program; theyre there to make
your life easier.